Assignement 6

Original text

“Firstly, I want to offer a check-list of the kind of operations we perform when we tackle textuality without any particular resort to theory. I will then ask what is missing, and suggest four areas which the traditional approach doesn't quite cover, using a Shakespeare sonnet by way of illustration. This is followed by a brief description of what is meant by deconstructive reading, and the final section an example of such reading is given, using Adrienne Rich's poem 'Transit.”

Paraphrase

Barry has gathered the most common ways to interpret literature. However, these are not adequate. He will in addition to the typical way of analyzing literature introduce four more elements. By using a Shakespeare sonnet, Barry will give an idea what these four elements look like. Adrienne Rich's poem “Transit, is a good example of what “deconstructive reading” is. This is a concept he will deal with in the end of the text.

Original text

These, then, are some of the main ways in which readers and critics engage with literary texts and begin to put forward accounts of what they mean. So, where does it leave us? The situation is this. We will always need these ten elements of interpretation. Literary criticism can never grow out of them, and they can never be superseded. It's impossible to do English without them. It always was, and it always will be.

Paraphrase

Barry emphasises how important “the ten elements” are. These ten ways to look at literature are indispensable when we interpret literature, he goes to the length of asserting that we can’t analyze literature without them. Barry says that it has always been an important part and it will be continued.

Important words/phrases that should be quoted

There are many terms that are hard to replace with other words or phrases, such as: macro-patterns, ten elements and deconstructive reading.

This paragraph is filled with language terminology and is therefore very hard to rephrase:

“So the deconstructor looks for such things as, firstly, contradictions, secondly, linguistic quirks and aporia, thirdly, shifts or breaks (in tone, viewpoint, tense, person, attitude, etc.), and finally, absences or omissions.”

Review

The author proves in various ways that he masters this area. He makes some really good points, especially by clearly illustrating the differences in Shakespeare’s sonnet. Examples like that are really useful when one is applying them in practice. However, I think Barry throughout the text overuses difficult words and terms. Considering that the first ten elements are quite basic facts.

Assignement 5

Peter Barry is in his text “Tackling Textuality – with theory” dealing with problems one might encounter when interpreting literature. He provides a checklist with types of rules we use when we deal with literature.

1. We look for the structure of the work. That is in order to be able to read between the lines.
2. Characters and things might change; what looked like a matter of course in the beginning of the novel might change and turn out to be something completely different towards the end.
3. We read between the lines and look beyond the obvious.
4. We make a distinction between meaning and significance.
5. The genre of the book affects the way we comprehend the work.
6. Many text are supposed to be read as metaphorical, especially poesy.
7. We don’t read everything as metaphorical, what is written is sometimes the only purpose and no further interpretation in needed.
8. We look for patterns. However, the interesting part is where the pattern is broken.
9. We understand how literary work is divided, the obvious divisions and the more hidden ones.
10. We understand that the meaning of words differ from different time periods.

Barry emphasises the importance of these ten ways on how to approach literature. However, they are not adequate; we need more means when we are interpreting literary works. He suggests four more elements and he uses Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 to illustrate theses in contrast to each other. According to Barry are these four elements literature and history, literature and language, literature and gender and literature and psychoanalysis. He illustrates clearly how theses different aspects of interpreting the very same text differ depending on the method one uses.

Barry discusses the relationship between language and literature. He defines the term deconstructive reading by using the term “textual harassment”. It is very common that people focus on details within the text rather than looking at the text as unit. He uses the poem “Oread” by Hilda Doolittle to illustrate how a “deconstructor”, as Barry likes to call them, reads a text.

He sums up by once again saying that analyzing literature is not easy. He claims that the tricky bits are there for a reason and that it is fun to elucidate them.

Keywords:

Metaphors – He uses metaphors throughout the text to compare how we interpret literature. Furthermore, he emphasises the importance of detecting them when reading literature.

“The ten elements” – Barry claims that these elements are as indispensible when we are analyzing literature.

Meaning – Analyzing literature is to find the meaning behind written words. His text is dealing with how to do this.

Deconstructive reading- This conception is explained thoroughly in the text.

Significance

Life is a competition, you are what you perform and accomplish, and a grade is used as an indicator to this. There are, at the moment, four types of grades and if you fail that will stay on, at least on a piece of paper. This piece of knowledge can be extremely stressful for a school-weary teenager. A teenager, however, is slowly approaching the grown-up world and grades can be a good driving force. A seven year-old on the other hand, who is eager to acquire knowledge, does she or he really need to be borne down under the weight of stress regarding marks? The answer is no, children at primary school should not be graded.

First year at primary school is for most children a fun time in life. Children learn new things without even be aware of it. All of a sudden they can read and write. At this stage would grades be a negative factor. Grades would make them aware of their result and less focused on the fun process of learning.

Children learn at a different pace. For some children is the first years at school like a walk in the park, everything comes natural. In contrary many children struggle, they might find it hard to accustom to school and its rules. This could change though, children that struggle might catch up with their fellow students within a few years time. The bottom line is that children are uneven in their performances in their early years at school, and they should be allowed to be that. Grades would at this stage mark children, and with bad luck for the rest of their years at school. There is a big chance that these children start performing badly, because that is what is expected from them.

School classes are growing and the resources are limited. Teachers find it hard to see children as individuals and what children perform on tests are commonly seen as their only foundation when marks are given. Test results are a poor indicator on how good children are in certain fields. Many children perform badly because of stress or performance anxiety. Because of big school classes and bad resources grades should not be allowed in primary school, simply because there are not enough bases to mark children.

One might argue that grades are good because it clearly shows where students stand comparing to their fellow students. Furthermore those students with special needs are discovered early and can thereafter receive the extra help and support they might need. In contrary, grades are not the only way to see where students stand knowledge wise. Instead teachers should focus on students as individuals and with support from national standardized test results. This creates a more accurate picture of the child and its needs. Moreover, this counteract preferential discrimination among students, something that grades is a hotbed for.

Grades are good and could be seen as an excellent incentive, but not at primary school. Children are not supposed to be burden with stress and pressure that grades pose a great risk to contribute to. Learning should be fun and therefore should grades not be allowed in primary school.

Charity- this year's Christmas gift!

Purchasing Christmas gifts is for many people related to stress and anxiety. There will always be people who seem to have everything and knowing what to give to these people is always an issue. In lack of inspiration is it easy to give away another tie, even though that has been a pattern of the last ten years. This year everyone should skip the ties and give something away that actually means something. Therefore charity should be this years Christmas gift.

In defiance of the recession, the Christmas trade increases and people spend more money with every year that passes. The average Christmas gift in Sweden costs between 100 and 499 Swedish crowns. 100 crowns is enough money to support a child in Vietnam for a month, saving 100 trees in the rainforest or adopting a tiger. These gifts make an important difference in the long-run. In contrary to a materialistic object which will in all probability be thrown out even before the Christmas tree.

The Christmas trade contributes to a vast waste of our environment and the climate. The gifts we are buying are produced with immense energy and are often transported long distances which contribute to the greenhouse effect. These noxious effects are unnecessary and by giving charity away one does not contribute.

Finding the right gift is time consuming, running around town the days before Christmas looking for gifts strains on ones nerves. Giving charity away is easy. It can be done within two minutes over the net. The surplus of time that otherwise would be spent looking for gifts can instead be spent with loved ones which is, after all, what Christmas is really about.

It might be considered boring and impersonal to give to charity and the younger generation will almost certainly not appreciate a piece of paper that represents a gift to charity rather than the latest toy. Moreover, our consumer driven society relies heavily on the Christmas trade for much of its business and people are generally expectant of material goods as gifts at this time. However, there are immense selections of different charitable purposes one can choose from. Giving a tree to a garden loving husband or a cuddly tiger that represents an adopted tiger somewhere in Africa to a nephew is very personal and original. People’s attitudes to gift giving will need to be changed if giving to charity is to become accepted. This is not impossibility; this can be done through raised awareness among people.

This year everyone should skip long queues, stress and badly thought-out Christmas gifts. Instead everyone should strike a blow for humanity and the environment by making charity this year’s Christmas gift.

“Proposal to solve bad diets among children”

The numbers of obese children have increased over the past ten years. In fact, the numbers have redoubled over the past ten years. Today obesity is a social problem, far more children than earlier suffer from diseases related to obesity. Approximately 30000-50000 are in great danger of contracting illnesses such as diabetes and cancer that are related to obesity. These children are eating themselves to a premature death. Many reports indicate the same thing, children and teenager’s diets are becoming worse.

One might wonder what has lead to this explosive development of bad diet among teenagers. One example is that sedentary activities are more common. Activities such as watching television and playing computer games incite excessive eating and drinking and are not physically demanding. In our stressful society are there is no time for cooking. In fact, researches show that cooking is what people skip in order to save time. This results in children being provided bad food by their parents. Furthermore, children imitate their parent’s behaviour. If their parents don’t cook for them there is a big possibility that later in life they will no cook for themselves or their children. Additionally, the food that is served at the school’s dining halls is not always of a high standard. This leads to children omitting the school lunch in addition to snacks and soft drinks.

In order to improve children’s and teenager’s diets there must be cooperation between parents and schools with support from the government.

Firstly, parents need to take responsibility for their children’s eating habits. To sit down and have dinner together with their children every day is something all parents should strive for. To provide them with homemade food should be a matter of course. Fast food and snacks should be a treat, not a quick solution to dinner. It is at home children should establish a healthy relationship to food.

Secondly, schools need to take a bigger responsibility. In the same way as schools educate children how to read and write they should also teach them what type of food is good for them and what is not. Lectures about nutrition should be a part of the curriculum. If parents fail to give their children a good knowledge of food, then schools should be the institution that does. The same applies to the food at school. It should be healthy and tasteful, which is unfortunately not always the case in today’s schools. In addition to this, children shouldn’t be exposed to temptations when they are at school. Many schools have set a good example of not offering sweets and soft drinks in the cafeterias. Results have been astounding, teacher have reported how they have noticed a remarkable positive difference on children’s temper and level of concentration since the sweets have been removed from the cafeterias.

Parents might argue that they do not have time to cook healthy food or that the government does not have means to change the food that is served in schools. The bottom line is that no parents want to see their children suffering from illnesses connected to bad diets. The cost to cover notifications of illness and treatments will be much higher for the government than if they would offer healthy food at school.

Together parents and schools can cooperate to give children a good education and a healthy relationship to food. It does not have to be hard and the positive effects will be immense.

1. Academic writing shouldn’t reflect the author’s personality therefore your personal style as a writer shouldn’t shine through. It’s an objective and formal type of writing. An easy and simplified way of defining the style in academic writing is that you shouldn’t write in the same way as you speak. There are established rules for academic writing and what it should look like. These rules make the difference in between writing a research paper or a mail to a friend. There are many aspects of academic writing one should have in consideration when writing. A few of them are dealt with below.

Be formal. That applies to use of vocabulary and grammar. Avoid colloquial words and expressions. The use of correct grammar is essential, that is avoiding abbreviations and contractions. Write “that is” rather than “that’s”. Use third-person perspective rather than first-person perspective and so forth.

Be clear and concise. It’s important to know what one wants to convey and try to do it in a clearly and structured manner. After all, academic writing is not a way to show how many difficult words you know. It is to convey a message or an idea in a good way.

2. Here follows an example of formal writing. It is from Royal Bank of Scotland’s webpage. It consists of many examples of formal writing. The text is very concise and clear. Words are well-chosen and suitable for its context. The writer has chosen to use the personal pronoun “we”, probably deliberately in order to refer to the bank as a group who are trying to win back the customers trust. The goal and what they are trying to accomplish is clear and it’s well structured within the text.

“Throughout the restructuring process we will remain firmly focused on the needs of our customers. We know that providing these individuals and businesses with the highest standards of service and a commitment to do what it takes to make it happen for them is the best way to retain their trust and loyalty.”

Here follows an example of informal writing. It is taken from a blog. It consists of slang, colloquial words and abbreviations. The word “bloke” is an example of a slang word and so is “Aussie” and “mateship”. Starting the sentence with a word like “yet” sets a very colloquial tone to the text. The language that is used is very informal and the writer’s personality shines through in the text.

“Yet, while it seems many Aussie blokes adhere to the Bro Code, (after all, we are home of the origin of "mateship"), blokes in other parts of the globe just don't seem to be as diligent.”

3. “Jeez! That must’ve been the yummiest meal I’ve ever had, seriously good! I’m sooo full, oh my god! But the rest of the night was wicked, the restaurant was really cosy. And all my mates were there, so glad everyone could make it. We had a gasbag! Nice wine, food and cool company, could life get any better than this?!”

“Last nights gathering was certainly delightful. The dinner was indeed very pleasant and so was the splendid company. The set menu and its accompanied wine were satisfactory and the restaurants décor was marvellous. Moreover, conversation was intense and continued throughout the evening. It was a conventional opinion among the group’s members that this is indeed one of life’s highlights.”